VIII. Procedural Rules of the 2016 Democratic National Convention
C. Order of Business
7. Roll Call for Presidential Candidate:

b. A majority vote of the Convention’s delegates shall be required to nominate the presidential candidate.

IV. Certification Requirements
C. Presidential Preference:

Ten (10) days after the completion of the state’s delegate selection process, each state’s Democratic Chair shall certify in writing to the Secretary of the Democratic National Committee the presidential preference (including uncommitted) of the state’s delegates.

Reading the various media stories on the report, I found other misrepresentations. For instance, The Hill claims that Clinton didn't want her email to be "accessible". In actuality, what the report stated was that Clinton didn't want her personal emails being accessible:

Secondly, Clinton did take action to preserve her emails, as the report notes. On Page 66 of the report, Janice Jacobs, the State Departments Transparency Coordinator, specifically addressed Clinton's handling of the emails:

The State Department, the OIG, and NARA all concurred that Clinton's actions in turning over the emails she had, in addition to others the State Department was able to discover, did mitigate not following proper procedures (i.e. printing out each email and filing it). It's true that in the beginning of Clinton's tenure as Secretary of State, during the first two months transition period, some emails were lost. However, there was no indication that an attempt was made to deliberately hide these emails from a salivating public: it's technology; stuff happens.

Lastly, I can almost hear the calls of "criminal Hillary" from a certain party who shall go nameless. Note, though, as the report mentions, there were no administrative penalties in place—either about the use of a private email server, or not following the established procedures for preserving emails—at the time Clinton served as Secretary of State. Moreover, there is no indication that she was even aware of the requirements.

State Department personnel were discouraged from using their private email, but not explicitly forbidden from doing so. As quoted in the CNN story—the one where Clinton was purportedly "slammed' by the OIG—the State Department spokesman concurred:

I'm an auditor within DoD for environmental regulatory compliance.

The hierarchy of wrongdoing goes something like this:

Willful and knowing disregard for Federal/State/Host Nation laws.
Violation of Federal/State/Host Nation laws.
Violation of Federal/State regulations.
.....
.....
.....
.....
Violation of policy.

Violation of policy not only isn't a crime (if they can't point to a statute, they're babbling), it's not even necessarily a bad thing. Policy is guidance that HQ gives to the field. The first thing any commander asks is, Can they hurt me?, and if they can't, they do what is best in their opinion to achieve the mission.

Violation of Departmental Regulations is not something where anyone outside the Department can hurt you, unless the Regulations are required by statute. In this case, I doubt that FISMA places any meaningful limits on actions of Department or Agency heads.

2009-2013 Hillary Clinton p 5
2009
CFR Provision added: "Agencies that allow employees to send and receive official electronic mail messages using a system not operated by the agency must ensure that Federal records sent or received on such systems are preserved in the appropriate agency recordkeeping system."

The FAM also included examples of emails that could constitute Federal records, including those providing key substantive comments on a draft action memorandum, documenting significant Department decisions and commitments reached orally, and conveying information of value on important Department activities. The Department has frequently reminded employees of this requirement, including through a November 2009 announcement to all employees that noted that Federal records can be found in “any media, including email, instant messages, social media, etc.” However, the Department believes that the majority of the millions of emails sent to and from Department employees each year are non-permanent records with no long-term value.

At the Department, compliance with this regulation and preservation of emails that constitute Federal records can be accomplished in one of three ways: print and file; incorporation into the State Messaging and Archive Retrieval Toolset (SMART); or the use of the NARA-approved Capstone program for capturing the emails of designated senior officials. Since 1995, the FAM has instructed employees, “until technology allowing archival capabilities for long-term electronic storage and retrieval of E-mail messages is available and installed,” emails warranting preservation as records must be printed out and filed with related Department records. NARA regulations codified in 2009 also specified that agencies must not use an electronic mail system to store the recordkeeping copy of electronic mail messages identified as Federal records unless that system contains specific features. However, according to the Department, its technology has “lagged behind” this mandate.

In 2009, IRM introduced SMART throughout the Department, enabling employees to preserve a record copy of emails through their Department email accounts without having to print and file them. However, the Office of the Secretary elected not to use SMART to preserve emails, in part because of concerns that the system would allow overly broad access to sensitive materials. As a result, printing and filing remained the only method by which emails could properly be preserved within the Office of the Secretary in full compliance with existing FAM guidance.

Requirements for Email Records in Personal Accounts: As previously stated, documents can qualify as Federal records regardless of the location, method of creation, or the medium involved. Consequently, records management requirements have always applied to emails exchanged on personal email accounts, provided their content meets the definition of a record. In 2004, NARA issued a bulletin noting that officials and employees “must know how to ensure that records are incorporated into files or electronic recordkeeping systems, especially records that were generated electronically on personal computers.” In 2009, NARA amended its regulations explicitly to address official emails on personal accounts:

Agencies that allow employees to send and receive official electronic mail messages using a system not operated by the agency must ensure that Federal records sent or received on such systems are preserved in the appropriate agency recordkeeping system.

In the 2014 amendments to the Federal Records Act, Congress added a provision prohibiting agency employees from creating or sending a record using “a non-official electronic messaging account” unless they copy their official electronic messaging account in the original creation or transmission of the record or forward a complete copy of the record to their official electronic messaging account within 20 days. Shortly before the enactment of the 2014 amendments, the Department issued an interim directive with similar requirements38 and subsequently updated the FAM in October 2015 as follows:

Under the Presidential and Federal Records Act Amendments of 2014, employees are prohibited from creating or sending a record using a non-official email account unless the employee (1) copies the employee’s official email account in the original creation or transmission, or (2) forwards a complete copy of record (including any attachments) to the employee’s official email account not later than 20 days after the original creation or transmission….The U.S. National Archives and Records Administration has advised that ”personal accounts should only be used in exceptional circumstances.” Therefore, Department employees are discouraged from using private email accounts (e.g., Gmail, AOL, Hotmail, etc.) for official business. However, in those very limited circumstances when it becomes necessary to do so, the email messages covering official business sent from or received in a personal account must be captured and managed in a Department email system in a manner described above in accordance with the Presidential and Federal Records Act Amendments of 2014. If an employee has any emails (regardless of age) on his or her private email account(s) that have not already been forwarded to the employee’s official email account, then such emails need to be forwarded to the employee’s state.gov account as soon as possible. Employees are reminded that private email accounts should not be used to transmit or receive classified information.

According to a 2010 U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) report, most agencies do not prioritize records management, as evidenced by lack of staff and budget resources, absence of up-to-date policies and procedures, lack of training, and lack of accountability.

While these are positive steps, OIG identified multiple email and other electronic records management issues during the course of this evaluation. In its technical comments on this report, the Department noted that its budget has been declining over the past years and has not kept pace with inflation at a time when its national security mission is growing. According to the Department, it did request additional resources for records management for fiscal year 2017, but additional funding will still be needed to fully address its records management challenges.

Although NARA is responsible for conducting inspections or surveys of agencies’ records and records management programs and practices, it last reviewed the Office of the Secretary’s records retention practices in 1991–a quarter century ago.

Print and File Requirements Not Enforced: S/ES staff have provided numerous trainings for the Office of the Secretary on records preservation responsibilities and the requirement to print and file email records. However, S/ES staff told OIG that employees in the Office of the Secretary have printed and filed such emails only sporadically. In its discussions with OIG, NARA stated that this lack of compliance exists across the government. Although the Department is aware of the failure to print and file, the FAM contains no explicit penalties for lack of compliance, and the Department has never proposed discipline against an employee for failure to comply. OIG identified one email exchange occurring shortly before Secretary Clinton joined the Department that demonstrated a reluctance to communicate the requirement to incoming staff. In the exchange, records officials within the Bureau of Administration wondered whether there was an electronic method that could be used to capture the Secretary’s emails because they were “not comfortable” advising the new administration to print and file email records.
Limited Ability To Retrieve Email Records: Even when emails are printed and filed, they are generally not inventoried or indexed and are therefore difficult to retrieve. As an illustration, almost 3,000 boxes, each filled with hundreds of pages of documents, would have to be reviewed manually, on a page-by-page basis, in order to identify and review all printed and filed emails from the Office of the Secretary since 1997. To help alleviate this problem, the Office of the Secretary could have adopted an electronic email management system in 2009 with the introduction of SMART. SMART allows users to designate specific emails sent or received through the Department’s email system as record emails; other SMART users can search for and access record emails, depending on the access controls set by the individual who originally saved the email. However, prior OIG reports have repeatedly found that Department employees enter relatively few of their emails into the SMART system and that compliance varies greatly across bureaus, in part because of perceptions by Department employees that SMART is not intuitive, is difficult to use, and has some technical problems.

Department senior officials discussed the Department’s obligations under the Federal Records Act in the context of personal email accounts. As discussed earlier in this report, laws and regulations did not prohibit employees from using their personal email accounts for the conduct of official Department business.

In another instance, in a June 3, 2011, email message to Secretary Clinton with the subject line “Google email hacking and woeful state of civilian technology,” a former Director of Policy Planning wrote: “State’s technology is so antiquated that NO ONE uses a State-issued laptop and even high officials routinely end up using their home email accounts to be able to get their work done quickly and effectively.”

Secretary Powell (January 20, 2001 – January 26, 2005): During Secretary Powell’s tenure, the Department introduced for the first time unclassified desktop email and access to the Internet on a system known as OpenNet, which remains in use to this day. Secretary Powell did not employ a Department email account, even after OpenNet’s introduction. He has publicly written:
To complement the official State Department computer in my office, I installed a laptop computer on a private line. My personal email account on the laptop allowed me direct access to anyone online. I started shooting emails to my principal assistants, to individual ambassadors, and increasingly to my foreign-minister colleagues ….
OIG identified emails sent from and received by Secretary Powell’s personal account in selected records associated with Secretary Powell. During his interview with OIG, Secretary Powell stated that he accessed the email account via his personal laptop computer in his office, while traveling, and at his residence, but not through a mobile device. His representative advised the Department that Secretary Powell “did not retain those emails or make printed copies.” Secretary Powell also stated that neither he nor his representatives took any specific measures to preserve Federal records in his email account. Secretary Powell’s representative told OIG that she asked Department staff responsible for recordkeeping whether they needed to do anything to preserve the Secretary’s emails prior to his departure, though she could not recall the names or titles of these staff. According to the representative, the Department staff responded that the Secretary’s emails would be captured on Department servers because the Secretary had emailed other Department employees.

NARA agrees with the foregoing assessment but told OIG that Secretary Clinton’s production of 55,000 pages of emails mitigated her failure to properly preserve emails that qualified as Federal records during her tenure and to surrender such records upon her departure.

Officials of organized labor told the Democratic Party today that it should dramatically increase the number of elected officials serving as delegates to Presidential nominating conventions but should not abandon the principle of having equal numbers of men and women as delegates.

When North Carolina Gov. James B. Hunt Jr., the commission chairman, asked if anyone wanted to debate the rule mandating "equal division" of each state delegation between men and women, there were no takers. While formal action awaits the January session, it was evident that the provision--for which women in the Democratic Party waged a 12-year fight--is now permanently embedded.

But there was no consensus on the way to bring more members of Congress and other elected officials into the next convention hall. On Friday, both the AFL-CIO and the Association of State Democratic Chairs recommended that 30 percent of the 1984 convention seats be reserved for uncommitted elected and party officials.

In 1980, only 10 percent of the delegate slots were reserved for them, and they were required to pledge that their presidential votes would fall in line with the other delegates from their states.

Rep. Gillis W. Long (D-La.), the chairman of the House Democratic Caucus, said that the reason only 37 House members served as delegates was that they did not want to choose between Carter and Kennedy and thereby align themselves with one faction at home.

He said the caucus wanted to choose two-thirds of its members as 1984 delegates--but only if they could go uncommitted, adding: "If they do not have that freedom, I assure you they will not participate."

There were a number of rationales given at the time for the implementation of superdelegates, none of which are necessarily mutually exclusive. The primary purpose of this diary will be to explore those rationales, based on a survey of contemporaneous newspaper accounts from the New York Times. However, it is also important to understand the underlying context: as of 1982, the Democrats had had two absolutely disastrous results out of the last three Presidential election cycles.

The basic rationale for the action, favored by National Chairman Charles Manatt. the Democratic leadership in Congress and the AFL-CIO. is that elected officeholders and party officials are the pick-and-shovel folks of party polities and are entitled to a bigger say. Also. it's argued that since lhey presumably reflect the voice of the, grass roots. their presence In a sense reflects mainstream thinking.

There Is also a seldom-mentioned elitist aspect to the rationale. Thal Is that the party bigwigs have a bigger grip on political realities -on which candidate has the best chance to win against the Republican nominee. Offered as Exhibits A and B are the nominations of McGovern and Carter, neither of whom was the choice of the party backs, In 1972 or 1976.

Finally, there is the political scientists' argument that members of Congress who have had little or no choice in the nomination of a Democratic president and are not likely to have the optimum stake in bis success. and hence aren't likely to be true partners In pushing his legislative program. Again, Carter is the prime exhibit offered.

“We must also give our convention more flexibility to respond to changing circumstances and, in cases where the voters’ mandate is less than clear, to make a reasoned choice. One step in this direction would be to loosen the much-disputed “binding” Rule 11 (H) as it applies to all delegates. An equally important step would be to permit a substantial number of party leader and elected official delegates to be selected without requiring a prior declaration of preference. We would then return a measure of decision-making power and discretion to the organized party and increase the incentive it has to offer elected officials for serious involvement.” (Remarks of Governor Jim Hunt, Institute of Politics, JFK School of Government, December 15, 1981)

After reading a number of impassioned defenses of why the Democratic presidential nomination should not be called next week on June 7th, I got curious. What’s the history here, since the superdelegates were added to the process? When a Democratic candidate hits the magic number of pledged delegates plus superdelegates, are they the nominee?

The answer: history says the first person to get to the magic number is the presumptive nominee, and says it unambiguously, even if the losers often disagree.

Here’s how it has gone since the superdelegates were added to the process.

First, and most obviously, “clinching” has always been defined as having enough superdelegates and delegates to win, since the invention of the superdelegate system in 1984. While some candidates have reached that number on surer footing than others, the press has always called the nomination “clinched” or “locked up” at the point the pledged + SDs number is reached.

Second, most non-incumbent candidates have needed superdelegates to win, and the history of superdelegates has been that once a Democrat hits the magic number and becomes the nominee, superdelegates are more likely to flow to the nominee than from them.

Also, in the history of the superdelegates, they have always ended up supporting the decision of the pledged delegates, and their most important contribution has been to amplify leads of the pledged delegate winner so that they can be assured success on a first ballot, and avoid the sort of messy convention that harms a general campaign.

Computation of (intermediate) Base Votes for Jurisdictions with Electoral Votes

The rules of the Democratic National Convention call for the following formula to be used in determining the allocation of delegate votes to each jurisdiction sending a delegation to the Convention.

Each jurisdiction with electoral votes is assigned a number of Base (delegate) votes based on an "Allocation Factor" multiplied by 3,200 [Call Rule I.B.] arrived at through a calculation involving the following factors:

State's Democratic Vote (SDV): The jurisdiction's popular vote for the Democratic candidate for President in the last three Presidential Elections (2004, 2008, and 2012). Source: The vote totals for 2004 and 2008 below were obtained from FEC.gov on 24 November 2010. The vote totals for 2012 were taken from The Green Papers 2012 General Election Presidential Popular Vote and FEC Total Receipts by Party on 17 January 2013.
Total Democratic Vote (TDV): The total popular vote for the Democratic candidate for President in the last three Presidential Elections (2004, 2008, and 2012).
The state's Electoral Vote (SEV) averaged over the last three Presidential Elections (2004, 2008, and 2012).
The total Electoral Vote of all jurisdictions (538).

The formula for determining a jurisdiction's Allocation Factor is:

Allocation Factor = ½ × ( ( SDV ÷ TDV ) + ( SEV ÷ 538 ) )

The number of Base votes assigned to a state is Allocation Factor × 3,200 rounded to the nearest whole number (fractions 0.5 and above are rounded up).

To summarize, half of a jurisdiction's base vote is determined by the number of Presidential Electors assigned to that state and half are computed by the number of people who voted for the Democratic Presidential candidate in the last three elections.

State- Census * * * * 3 yr Turnout * * * Delegates
TX * 26,059,203 * - * 9,669,461 * * * * 147
NY * 19,570,261 * - * 13,456,847 * * * *247
CA * 38,041,430 * - * 22,874,243 * * * *475

2008 Primary
Obama: 375,311
Clinton: 259,782
Sub Total: 635,093

Write-In: 5,537
Grand Total: 640,630

2016 Primary
Sanders: 333,638
Clinton: 257,374
Sub Total: 591,012

Write-in: 10,634
Grand Total: 601,646

New Jersey's Democratic Primary Electorate
White: 57%
Black: 26%
Hisp/Lat: 11%
Asian/Other: 6%

Oregon's Electorate
White: 87%
Black: 1%
Hisp/Lat: 4%
Asian/Other: 7%

The 2008 delegates were prior to the sanction against Florida and Michigan.